Abstract
Ritualistic language is a key mechanism for instilling military priorities in service members and civilians alike. This chapter first exemplifies this claim by examining military rites of passage, focusing on the content and style of United States Marine Corps training language. Such language is rich with teachings about recruits’ necropolitical role, directly and indirectly conveying messages that recruits are interchangeable components of the military machine, that they are killable, and that they must dehumanize outgroups in turn. They learn to renounce aspects of individualism while receiving indirect lessons about the negotiability of human dignity and even of the military’s own official policies. The chapter then explores the linguistic militarization of US civilians through the ceremonial platitudes politicians and civilians utter about military service. It concludes by exploring the interdiscursive flow of military training stances into conservative political speech.